I wished I had found the info and story I’m about to share by the time I was part of the WhatsApp-learning-to-invest group I was in. It was all fake, a criminal operation. I blamed myself for being scammed. However, looking at everything backwards, I concluded that it was not only my fault. After looking at all the facts I realized taht the system is broken, it is a mess, and somehow contributes to the success of scam operations. I hope this info will help you to avoid being scammed, at least with the type of fraud I got robbed and provide some knowledge to help others to get out if you are already inside. But more importantly, I hope it helps victims to get rid of the “it was all my fault” mentality, because, for real, it’s not all your fault.
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My first contact with the scammers who created Wealth Tutor Finance Institute or WT Finance was through a Facebook Ad. I thought Facebook, Twitter and many others were doing their job filtering and validating good, legal businesses to do business with them. They are not. And it looks like they legally can advertise frauds and criminals without being liable for it. So, I thought, “why in the world Facebook and others would allow scammers to advertise in their platforms? It is against their own terms”. Well, they do, and they profit from the selling of those ads, billions of dollars. We, users don’t have the resources to filter the people behind those ads and that’s one level of exposure I faced. Scammers love Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Tik-Tok, YouTube, etc. I just wanted to be part of an institution that would help me to improve my investment skills, and I thought that I would find it through them.
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From the ad, I ended up getting a link to a WhatsApp group. I saw hundreds of names and phone numbers in the description of the group with pictures of real people. Later I found that most pictures were just taken from the Internet, especially Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and the likes to make the group look real. They were always posting great comments about the institution and their “professors”, comments generated, of course by the scammers. While I was there, new people were added, and others were removed. Looking backwards, this first group, (because I was transferred to other groups) was a mixture of real people, new participants like me that came from the Facebook Ad and maybe other sources and scammers.
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Professor Lysander Clark was the character created by the scammers to act as the leader of everything. Then, there was Daniel Bell and Martin Wilson professors as well and an assistant, Esther Christie. In other scamming operations like Education Pioneer Wealth Society, Pioneer Era, Dream Advisor and others they have different characters, but they follow the same structure: professors, assistance, an AI system they say they use for prediction and trading and a lot of educational information. Also, a contest between two professors to replace the leader, Lysander Clark. You can vote for your favorite one. All that to get you engaged. There are raffles every week giving crypto and their tokens. I saw people (scammers) getting prizes for thousands of dollars. The most I got was fake institute tokens. As I research more and more, I have little doubts that the same criminal organization could be behind those scam operations I mentioned before. They are growing bigger and more powerful, while authorities do little to stop them. That's my opinion.
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At first you are impressed with the knowledge, that later I found it was just ChatGPT type of generated text or any Artificial Intelligence generator. Perfect grammar. All polished texts. Professors engage “students” in a brainwashing process with the support of other “participants” who are scammers as well. Saddly, I discovered it after all was over. There are no live video interactive presentations for obvious reasons. It’s all text, comments, explanations and images. It is so intense that you are immersed in the experience. You are required to check in every day, twice a day. That’s a way to keep you hocked with the scam. Communications with the professors and assistant happens via WhatsApp and Telegram. But the main source of contact and scamming is WhatsApp.
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From teaching you are invited to invest as part of the “teaching program”. Your first investment level is stocks; second level is options. At this level you are encouraged to use your own accounts. Predictions are often right. So, you are impressed and want more and more every time. They say they use an AI system to predict, but they never send you a copy of the software or allow you to test it personally. They use that lingo all the time for weeks and months to make you trust the “AI system”. You are asked to send screenshots of every transaction supposedly to assist you with your investment journey. The truth is, they want to see if you have money, and they will use that info in the process.
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At this point I escalated my own research about WT Finance Institute. Even though all looked right, I wanted to find out if they were a scam. I found a lot of articles on the Internet from places like Yahoo Finance, Quora, Medium, Reditt and a long etcetera. Later I found that all that info and articles were created by the scammers. However, only after all this was over and I dig into what happened, I was able to understand that none of those platforms do anything to verify the sources of those articles or its connections to criminals. It is like it is ok to publish an article on whatever medium as long as the platform is not informed that the article is connected to commiting a crime. They don't do any due diligent to validate sources or information credibility.
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Among many YouTube videos promoting this scam, I found this one about their 14th Seminar Ceremony. There I saw the Lysander Clark they created, the Daniel Bell, etc. I still wonder if they are actors or real scammers. I’m not talking about stock videos. It is as if they laugh at us, the authorities, YouTube, like saying “We are here. Look at us. We are stealing your money, and you can’t do anything”. At the time of writing this story, YouTube has not taken down those videos despite many people reporting them as part of a fraud. Yes, everything was fake, created by the criminal operation, including the comments and reviews. Why YouTube and other media outlets allow these criminals to use their platform and why they don’t do a better job to protect us, the public and why there are people defending their lousy job? Some way somehow, all that reinforced my belief that those people were real. I also wonder if the FBI, the fraud department and other authorities are looking into those videos to identify people of interest. So many questions. But bottom line, It’s a failed system entirely.
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They offered and sent me a gift. I provided my address, and, like many other people, I got the “gift” in the mail. I was asked to send a picture of the gift to them. The truth? That’s just a way to confirm your address. I think they use that info for blackmailing and harassment. I’ll explain later.
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From the initial WhatsApp group, I was transferred to another group, a VIP group. I now understand that I was in this new group as the only victim. They created dozens, maybe hundreds of groups, one for each victim. One victim, one group. It's what I think. Everybody else is either somebody from the scamming operation or a robot generating reactions. I discovered it was a lie because after all this was over, I called the phone numbers in my group as landlines, and almost all of them were either disconnected or not in service. Another advantage of scamming people this way is that even if you report your group and WhatsApp shut it down, they still keep the operation going with other groups. They just loose one victim: You. I wonder, why is it that WhatsApp allows disconnected, not in service phone numbers to still be active on their platform being part of a financial/investment group for months? How is it that it doesn’t ring any bell on their side that hundreds of phone numbers in a group are non-working phone numbers out of their platform?
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The teaching switched from stocks and options to Crypto. But we still got some options and stock advice. At this point we are told that the professor wanted to test his “revolutionary” Artificial Intelligent system with us the students. But they didn't send a copy or link of the "AI system", just signals suppoudselly generated by the system. The promise was to get the software once it was all tested and proved that it worked perfectly. After all is over, you easily conclude that the AI system never exist. They were the only ones saying that their “successful predictions were generated by the AI System”.
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They invited us to register with LNN-GO, a crypto trading platform that looks like many others, but it is part of the fraud. As far as I have seen from comments, the pig butchering scam Education Pioneer Wealth Society uses its own platform following the same pattern as WT Finance. The partner company they say runs LNN-GO is Lencoin. To convince everybody to sign up, they showed a company registration link in the state of Washington. I verified the info and checked with the Secretary of State office of the state of Washington and confirmed that the registration was real. They showed a “MSB” registration for the company. This is the registration that entities entering the Money Services Business file with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. It was real. After some research, I found that many scammers register “a name” and “a company” with the US government and show those registrations to convince people they are legit. Could somebody explain to me how this is possible? A UK company registration was also part of the documents used to convince people. You are brainwashed with the idea that LNN-GO is like Binance when that company started. Just a new company doing everything well.
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They didn’t ask anybody to send any money at this point. All the contrary. To test the AI system, they transferred $500 USDT to my account on the LNN-GO platform. It’s all part of the process to gain your trust. Reality is, they are after the big money. They send you signals supposedly generated from their AI System. They use the fake native token of the LNN-GO platform, not bitcoin, ETH or other well known crypto coins they cannot manipulate. You need to execute the signal as soon as they are sent. So, you trade with $500 and always win. Why? Because they manipulate the trades. It is their platform and it is their token. They don’t use Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Kucoin... for the same reason, because they cannot manipulate those platforms, and the plan is to gain your trust, so you send more and more money. I was able to suppousedly make over $600 dollars on top of the $500. They asked me to return the $500 and keep the profit.
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To add even more to their level of hypocrisy, the professor asked students to donate part or all our profits to a charitable institution. “What a philanthropic human being”, you think. No. It's all part of playing with your mind. Along the way, they presented a lot of philosophical concepts about the value of life, the meaning of money to improve society, how to invest in family and good deeds and a bunch of marvelous ideas to convey the sense that they are the real deal and that they are good people instead of criminals.
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As you can see, sending them money to invest doesn’t happen immediately. It’s not just a plain and simple proposition. It’s someway complex even for a smart mind. You are brainwashed to believe your money goes to an account you completely control, but it’s a lie. How long would it take for a good person that does not find a story like this or read reviews and comments like I found after a lot of searching to understand that he is immersed in a fraud? With that much Phycological manipulation and media reinforcement, I would say: Until the end of the scam operation, when it is too late.
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After the “free” money, a new level of investment started where we were asked to use our own money and send it to the scammers platform LNN-Go. So, they asked for an investment of at least $5,000 USDTs with a return promise of 200% or even more. "Why not?" I said. "Everything is working well". So, signals are sent and trades continue. So, as I traded, I also withdrew some of the earnings to my external account. At this point you are still allowed to withdraw. I think that they didn’t care too much about little withdrawals. They are after the big money.
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After the $5,000 plan supposedly went well, it was time for a new chapter, and we are invited to sign a contract and enter a plan with the promise of no less than 300% profit. $50,000 is the minimum initial investment and the plan would take about 2 months to complete. You need to sign the contract and send a copy of your ID, like your driver's license. There are levels going up to 500k, and even Millions of USDTs. Why a signed contract? You are told this is to guarantee that every signee will stay until the end of the plan. It’s another lie. From this moment, nobody would be able to withdraw whatever money they sent. There are two especial conditions in the plan: 1. You cannot withdraw any money from your account until the end of the plan. 2. You cannot withdraw any money until you pay a commission fee, that is a percentage of your fake profit. I saw at those two conditions, and I said: “ok”. But there was one condition they never stated: You cannot use your profits or money from your LNN-GO account to pay "fees and commission". You need to bring new, fresh out of your pocket money.
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From this moment and along the entire journey, participants in the group (remember I was the only real person in that group, all other are scammers) showed screenshots of Crypto transfers. Fake. They also showed bank statements simulating withdrawals of hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest in the plan, all part of the brainwashing and psychological manipulation to motivate you to do the same. Heartbraking stories of poeple doing sacrificies to get money are shared. It's all so well and diabolicly planned that I think they use psicologists or profesionals in human behavior to craft this type of operations. They go as far as to show pictures pretending there are people getting stacks of cash in bags out of their banks, desks full of cash and even trunks carrying money, suppousedly to invest in "the plan".
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The institute offered loans from their “own resources” to those who didn’t have enough to enter a plan. What a marvelous institution right? It’s a lie. Those are just numbers on your LNN-Go account. They don’t lend you anything and you don’t owe anything. The point is: you cannot withdraw that fake money to an external account and, to repay, you cannot use the money you have on your LNN-GO account. You need to repay with money out of your pocket. But they don't tell you that upfront. They won’t tell you anything about it until it’s too late.
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As "the plan" moves forward, the trades are all successful with minimum distress. Occasionally, they will say that things didn’t go as planned, but it is all part of the “act” to make it look real. I accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in fake numbers . Everything was just numbers on the platform. No withdrawal.
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Another level of “making a lot of money” comes in when the professor announces that we (the institute) were invited by the platform LNN-GO to participate in their ICO, or Initial Coin Offering, also known as IDOs. In the real world of Crypto, this happens when a coin or token is created, and the issuers offer the coin to a selected group of people or investors to raise money for the project. The tokens or coins are offered at a discount. I have participated in IDOs before. In this case, it’s all fake. But they make it feel real. So, we are told that it is possible for us to make 300 % or even 400 % in just days. it's all part of "the plan", you are told. Brainwashing accelerates to explain us the advantages of bringing in more money to make even more money. So, BCX is the first token we could invest in, and they made it go up to about 400%. It’s all manipulated by the scammers. After this first IDO, they made people think that not everybody got 100% of the allocation they applied for. That means that some people were given 25%, or even 15% of the total tokens they applied to buy, because that’s the way ICOs work. Keep that in mind.
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A second IDO is announced. This time the possibility is to make up to 1500%. We are told that since we did so well with the first one, the platform is giving us access to what is called “the green channel”, which means that we can get access to 100% of the allocation we applied for. So, we get more brainwashing and manipulation to bring even more money and go “all in”: “Get loans, mortgage your house, withdraw your 401k, get money from friends, family,...”
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This is also the time when all professors invited students to get C2C (customer to customer) loans. They created the story line that loans are offered by the LNN-GO platform, not the Institute. Another lie. It's all the same scam operation. Money from the loans go directly to your LNN-GO account. You cannot withdraw a penny to an external account. And... You got it. You cannot repay with the money you have on your LNN_Go account. You need to bring fresh money from your pocket. The truth is the same as with the Institute loans: they don’t lend you anything and you do not owe them anything. But they make you feel like you really got money and in order to withdraw all the money that is made from that loan, you first need to repay the loan...with real money, your money. They made the second token value to skyrocket to about 1500%.
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Then they introduced a last IDO. This last IDO is so promising that it will go up to 4000%, according to them. Once again it is all part of the game. They said “MDF” is the last opportunity, and then the plan will be fulfilled and called off ahead of time. "Everybody will be able to withdraw". Just think about it: The more money they say you made, the greater your commision to withdraw. From tens of thousands in commision, you go up to hundreds of thousands. That's why they want you to beleive that your account grew to millions of dollars. Minimum to participate is $500,000 USDTs. So, we get more pressure and manipulation to go "all in".
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We are told that the institute was upgraded by the platform to be a “Institutional Investor” which means, that the Institute (all of us) need to come up with $300 million USDTs to avoid loosing the "green channel". No green channel means meaningless allocations. So, “get money from wherever you can”. That’s the conversation in the final weeks of the scam. Brainwashing is aggressive this time. People are scolded for being passive. They made up stories about the professor not sleeping, getting almost sick due to his great efforts to make us rich. “All in” is the motto. At the end, supposedly, the goal is achieved, and they made us think that the token went up about 4500% from its original value. The professor calls the plan fulfilled and everybody can withdraw their earrings. Right? NO.
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When everybody is ready to withdraw, nobody can take any money out until you repay your loan with fresh money. You cannot use money from your LNN-GO account, remember? Harassment starts very subtly toward those who took loans. They are menaced with damaging their credits, putting their names on a blacklists, taking them to court and even some real participants commented out of the scam operation that they were told that somebody would show up in front of their houses to collect debts. Remember the gift they sent? They have confirmation of where those victims live for real.
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After repaying loans with fresh money, we needed more fresh money to pay for commissions. "No withdrawal until you pay loans and commission". So, if your number is 1.5 million dollars, you are asked to pay 10%, which is $150k. When you pay, then what?
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I was told that due to the great number of participants, there were thousands of people waiting in the line to withdraw. So, my withdrawal would take months to process. But they were working on a solution. The solution? If I paid about $20k, they would accelerate the withdrawal process giving me a “preferential” status and my withdrawal would take just hours to be processed. However, when yo pay the fee, nothing happens.
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The last days of the scam were about people (the scammers in the group) getting their money withdrawn and enjoying vacations, buying cars and properties. Everybody was paying their loans and commissions. It's all part of the psicogical inmersion to make you feel that there are people who are really getting their money out. So, you think that your time is coming soon. The professor Clark they created was retiring and getting the Institute ready for a new 2025 chapter. After a lot of blah, blah, blah,...
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The group (my group) paused to allow people “to enjoy themselves” and take time to prepare for new plans. So, no more sharing in the group was allowed. Communication with the fake assistant Esther Christie started to fade. The professors didn’t answer my messages. LNN-GO customer service told me that I needed to wait even more for my withdrawal due to technicalities.
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One day I tried to get access to my LNN-GO account and my account was “frozen”. Customer service was contacted but has never answered. Nobody has ever answered. The Wealth Tutor Finance Institute Website was taken down. I was removed from all WhatsApp groups I ever participated in. The only thing left was to count my losses.
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I did report this event to the FBI IC3 website, filed a report with the Fraud Department, emailed the Secretary of State of Washington where Lencoin is registered as a company, sent a report to the Attorney General of the State of Washington, called police. I did report the scammer videos to YouTube. So far, no action that I know has been taken.
That’s my story. No different to many others. I know even scammers will read this and laugh. Some people who have not been scammed and believe they will never be, will do the same. I’m getting little support from people in this subreddits, some inviting me to subscribe to the “victim mentality”: “It was all your fault, not the scammers’, not the media that is facilitating their operations. Not the government that is allowing this problem to grow bigger and bigger. There is nothing you can do”. However, I’m here telling my story to tell all victims: “IT’S NOT ALL YOUR FAULT” and there is something we can do instead of coming to forums like these ones to cry and get burnt out. We need to promote change in the entire system, starting by making social media, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Whatssapp,... accountable for their partnership with criminals. A class action lawsuit is the way to go. They must compensate all victims of those scammers they are profiting from with ads and publications. Some people will say “That’s impossible. You will never get justice. They are too powerful to deal with. They have section 230 that allows them to advertise frauds and scams”. But even with my little voice that I hope will grow bigger, I join all those who have the courage to say, “WE CAN”, if we unite and we fight, “WE CAN”. We need to stop blaming the victims. We need to raise awareness, but also consciousness. Our government must change the way they deal with this issue, including international cooperation to bring those criminal organizations to justice. We need to write letters, sponsor events to tell our legislators, representatives and even president Trump that it is time to provide better protection to innocent Americans who are exposed to so much fraud. We are sick and tired of this. Scammers are getting more and more powerful. They are getting more and more money. This problem is getting bigger and bigger. We need change and we need it now. It’s not all our fault.
